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Autodesk published a series of videos showing new features of the upcoming versions 2014 of its popular 3ds Max, Maya a Softimage products. More information will be announced during the Unfold event on March 27th. At the same time, Autodesk will also rise the prices of Subscription. Act now and renew your licenses at current rates.

Roman Coppola’s ‘A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III’ Colored on DaVinci Resolve

March 4, 2013

Blackmagic Design today announced that American Zoetrope, a San Francisco based production and post house, and SPY, a FotoKem company based in San Francisco and specializing in visual effects, used DaVinci Resolve Lite and DaVinci Resolve, respectively, for color grading on Roman Coppola’s latest film, “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.”

Resolve was used by freelance colorist and VFX artist Ryan Bozajian at American Zoetrope for the early conforming and initial color correction, with footage then sent to SPY for final color correction. Ryan and Sin Cohen, American Zoetrope’s digital post production manager, worked closely with SPY's Head of Technology, Steve Maggioncalda, and Senior Colorist, Chris Martin, on system calibration to ensure a seamless transition to SPY for a final color grade on Resolve. The project was then exported out of Resolve for film outs, digital cinema packages and video masters, and the team benefited from the ability to turn Resolve’s LUTs on and off for each deliverables’ needs.

“We developed a great workflow where certain nodes meant certain things, so when the project was handed over to Chris, there was a system for him to interpret right away,” said Ryan. “Resolve’s innate flexibility made the migration easy, and it was a huge advantage for the production.“

“The goal was to get the heavy lifting color correction done up front at Zoetrope, which would lead to an efficient final DI at SPY. We made sure the grading environment at Zoetrope was calibrated as closely as possible to SPY’s DI theater,” said Chris. “We even did initial tests that resulted in Roman feeling very good about how the color decisions made at Zoetrope translated at SPY. Upon import of the project, the media linked up immediately, and we finished color in just two days.”

Because of the compatibility between the two systems, SPY did not have to reconform, translate color decision lists or regrade the project, and instead, simply fine tuned it using Resolve’s Power Windows to sharpen and accentuate features, custom curves to hold highlights and maintain contrasts and multi point tracker for enhanced efficiency. The collaborative process maximized American Zoetrope's time and budget, while still allowing a specialized facility to handle final DI and deliverables.

“We got two weeks of time consuming pre grading work, which you don’t need to be in a DI suite for, done in our office, and Roman was able to work with Ryan in a non pressured environment,” said Sin. “We were able to maximize our time and budget, but still finish in a proper suite. It was the perfect combination.”

"Resolve's power and flexibility really made this whole process possible and incredibly seamless on top of that," said Roman Coppola, Director, American Zoetrope. "It was the bridge between the two workflows, allowing us to collaborate with SPY in the most efficient and cost effective way possible."

American Zoetrope and SPY are already collaborating on a second project for which Sin is using Resolve for dailies creation and transcoding for offline editing, which sets up media pools for a faster conform. “Now, everything goes into Resolve right off the camera. The projects get built in Resolve from the start, and I can create dailies out of Resolve with all the editing materials linking back to the system. It’s a seamless round trip that saves me time in the online process,” said Sin.

Press Photography

Product photos of all Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images. “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III” images are available here.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

About SPY

SPY was founded in San Francisco in 1998, and acquired by FotoKem in 2009. A highly regarded creative studio, SPY has contributed to many projects for some of the industry’s leading advertising agencies, including Goodby Silverstein & Partners, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Leo Burnett, DDB, and more. Over the past several years, SPY has also provided visual effects for a number of features including Avatar and Priest, as well as effects and color grading for director Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt. The facility expanded to Santa Monica in 2012, and shares an address with FotoKem’s award winning sound studio Margarita Mix. For more information, go to www.spypost.com, or follow SPY on Facebook (www.facebook.com/spypost).

Livepad announced the release of its iOS apps for ATEM Production Switchers, Strata View, Strata Lite and Strata Pro, which are now available for download from the iTunes App Store. Strata View is a free app to test your connection or to use as a Tally display (on iPhone / iPod Touch). Get it at itunes.apple.com.

Blackmagic Design would like to congratulate “Les Miserables,” “Zero Dark 30,” ”Prometheus,” “Skyfall,” “Frankenweenie,” “Searching for Sugar Man” and “Silver Linings Playbook” on their 2013 Oscar nominations, awarded by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Blackmagic Design is proud to announce that color correction for all of these films was done on DaVinci Resolve.

DaVinci Resolve was used to address a wide range of color correction and 3D grading needs presented by the films. This year's nominees also join the long list of past Oscar nominated films that used DaVinci Resolve systems, including “Avatar,” “Precious,” “Invictus,” ”Coraline,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Fighter.”

DaVinci Resolve is used by thousands of colorists worldwide. It has been used to grade more feature films, television commercials, documentaries, episodic television productions and music videos than any other color grading system.

About DaVinci Resolve

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the world’s highest performance color correction solution for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux computers. DaVinci Resolve supports more real time color correction than any other system because it’s not limited by the performance of the computer it’s running on. DaVinci Resolve eliminates this performance barrier because it’s based on a cluster of high performance GPU cards, so all processing is always real time. DaVinci Resolve has the power of a true real time performance solution so handles complex color grades even when using dozens of primaries, secondaries, Power Windows™, multi point tracking, blurs, and more. DaVinci Resolve provides incredible performance in a low cost solution which can be easily upgrade by adding extra GPU’s for supercomputer power to handle 4K resolutions, stereoscopic 3D and real time grading direct from raw camera files such as Blackmagic Cinema Camera, ARRI raw, RED r3d and Sony F65 files which can be handled with ease.

Press Photography

Product photos of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s DaVinci Emmy™ award winning color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Chaos Group published a new update to its popular rendering software V-Ray for 3ds Max. This service release features several optimizations and new features and is free to download for all V-Ray 2.0 users. V-Ray 2.4 adds support for rendering hair created with HairFarm 2.0 and V-Ray Proxy support for Alembic .abc files. There are also several new features and optimizations within V-Ray RT such as support for instancing, support for Forest Pro instancing, and faster update in ActiveShade rendering with the CPU engine when adjusting VrayLights. V-Ray RT GPU now offers CUDA speed optimizations and optimizations for GK110 cards.